Report: Top UK Officials Believe Iran Helped North Korea Advance its Nuke Program

Senior officials in the United Kingdom's Foreign Office believe that Iran has aided North Korea in the latter's development of nuclear bombs that can be mounted onto ballistic missile The Sunday Telegraphreported.

It is not yet clear what kind of device was detonated in the latest North Korean nuclear test, which took place on September 3, but it appears from the size of blast that the weapon tested was between the second and third stages of developing the hydrogen bomb---the type of nuclear device with the most destructive power---The New York Timesreported last week.

The Foreign Office, according to the Sunday Telegraph report, is attempting to ascertain if "current and former nuclear states" assisted the isolated Asian nation develop a more sophisticated weapon. Iran is considered the leading suspect, but Russia may have played a role.

According to the report, it is "not credible" that North Korea's nuclear scientists achieved the accelerated advances in its nuclear program on their own.

"There is currently an investigation into exactly how the country has managed to make this leap in technological ability,” UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said recently. “We are looking at the possible role that may have been played, inadvertently or otherwise, by some current and former nuclear states.”

"British officials say Iran assists North Korean nuclear program," Israel's Deputy Minister for Diplomacy Michael Oren tweeted in response to the Sunday Telegraph story. "No surprise but what's the world going to do about it?"

If the Taylor Force Act is passed it would "stop incentives to terror," a friend of the army veteran who was killed in Jaffa by a Palestinian terrorist in March of last year was quoted as saying in an op-ed written by Bradley Martin, published Tuesday in The Hill.

If passed, the bill "will stop incentives to terror and give Palestinians a reason to wake up in the morning and live rather than die," Ronen Gurievsky, described as Force's best friend, who is a tour guide in Tel Aviv told Martin, "Taylor is the kind of person who would want to give people a reason to live.”

"I am in favor of anything to stop bloodshed,” Stuart Force, Taylor's father added. “I feel that rewarding people for terrorism is totally out of the realm of decency.”

Martin, a Senior Fellow with the Haym Salomon Center, wrote that the stabbing death of Force and wounding of ten others by a knife-wielding Palestinian "spurred the creation of the Taylor Force Act, which would stop American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority until the PA ceases paying stipends to terrorists and their families." If enacted as law, the Taylor Force Act would penalize the PA for paying stipends to families of murderers "equal to several times the average monthly Palestinian wage."

Last week, the Senate made the Taylor Force Act part of the foreign appropriations legislation to ensure that it will be voted on before the end of the year.

Fearing Hate Crimes, French Principal Says He Kept Jewish Students Away from His School

A former French school principal from the city of Marseille has revealed the depth of anti-Semitism in public schools, saying that he regularly warned Jewish students not to attend his institution because for fear of hate crimes.

His comments come at a time when the number of Jews attending public school in France has dropped significantly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported Sunday. Whereas 30 years ago the majority of Jewish children were enrolled in public institutions, now only a third are. The remaining two-thirds are divided equally between Jewish schools and private schools that are not Jewish, including Catholic and Protestant institutions.

The retired principal, Bernard Ravet, spoke about his experience in a newly published book that he co-authored together with Emmanuel Davindenkoff, a Le Monde journalist.

His co-author Davindenkoff told JTA on Thursday that it was a shocking “failure” of the education system that Jewish children can no longer attend public school in safety.

Meanwhile, France’s Interior Minister strongly condemned an anti-Semitic hate crime in Paris that took place last Thursday, in which three Jews were tied up, beaten and robbed. Ben Cohen reported in The Algemeiner that the perpetrators told their victims, “you are Jews, you have money.”

At a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Nazi deportation of Jews from Paris in July, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed, “we will not surrender to anti-Zionism, because it is a reinvention of anti-Semitism.”

Israeli humanitarian-aid groups are already on their way to Florida after Hurricane Irma made landfall this Sunday and threatened the state with tornadoes, catastrophic storm surges, and strong winds and flooding.

Other Israeli aid teams are making their way to Mexico, which was hit by a deadly earthquake on Thursday night, and are offering aid to communities in Haiti and the Caribbean, also devastated by the powerful Hurricane Irma.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mickey Noam-Alon, from IsraAID. “There are so many massive events going on worldwide.”

“This is rare,” added Shachar Zahavi, founder of nongovernmental aid agency iAID. “It’s really not common to have so many disasters all at one go. We are all rushing to keep up.”

“This kind of reaction from Israel is not unusual these days,” said Raphael Poch, International Media Spokesman for United Hatzalah. “Since the earthquake in Nepal in 2015, Israel has become experts in search and rescue and disaster aid. We are a country that knows how to do this well, and we are happy to share our knowledge with the rest of the world.”